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Book Review: The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers by Eleonore Stump

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The Book

Stump, Eleonore. The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers, 2016.

Stump’s volume The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers deals with a question that has vexed many for centuries: is the God argued for by philosophical theologians the same being in the pages of Scripture. Atheists will often answer: no. Some Calvinists also answer: no. And open theists frequently say no.

The Problem

It’s important when claiming that a contradiction exists between assertions to understand the meaning of the assertions. The three apparently contradictory assertions are:

  1. The God of the Bible is personal, dynamic, responsive, and active.
  2. The God of the philosophers is being itself (not a being and not a person), uncaused, and timeless.
  3. The God of the Bible is the God of the Philosophers.
Stump solves the problem with Aquinas

Stump uses the writings of Thomas Aquinas, perhaps the most widely read philosophical theist but also a prolific Bible commentator to show that these three assertions can be reconciled and that, indeed, it’s the understanding of God’s simplicity and eternity that can make sense of the Bible’s picture of God.

Her main picture of this is the book of Jonah. She observes that if the classical picture of God as the uncasued cause is true, it is difficult for many to see how the picture of God in Jonah could also be true. The Lord responds to Jonah’s prayers, changes his mind, has conversations with Jonah, and so-on. She responds to these charges by explaining Aquinas’ doctrines of the Holy Spirit’s relationship to the individual Christian, God’s eternity, God’s immutability, and God’s simplicity.

Holy Spirit

For Stump it’s important to acknowledge that Aquinas believes in the Trinity as well as God’s eternity, immutability, and simplicity. What this means then is that Aquinas believes that the Holy Spirit is eternal, immutable, and simple. Aquinas taught that the Holy Spirit and the person of faith are in a relationship “close enough and intimate enough to be thought of as a uniting in love (49).”

After this she observes that one solution to the apparent inconsistence is to suppose that there are “two Aquinases.” But she points out that Aquinas’ writings don’t hold up to the charge of that he is guilty of “so great an inconsistency (55).”

So for Aquinas, the closeness of the Holy Spirit to the believer in time and the deity of the Holy Spirit indicate that he saw the personal God of Scripture and the God of the philosophers as one and the same being.

If in Aquinas’ view the Holy Spirit can have close personal, responsive relationships with human beings in time, what explanation of the attributes of God (immutability, eternity, and simplicity) make sense of this?

Eternity

Here, Stump argues that “nothing about God’s eternal knowledge of future events rules out human free will…(70).” Her argument is against the idea that God’s eternity (persistent timeless existence) precludes any coherent notion of God’s interaction with beings in time. She utilizes an argument from analogy using one of my favorite books, Flatland, to show how it is possible for time to be present to God all at once (62-63). I’ll leave it to her to explain it to you in the book.

She also uses the psychological concept of “shared attention” to explain what it might mean for God to be personally present with individual persons while being eternal in nature (71). God can also answer prayer “because of prayers” without answering them after the prayers or based on foreknowledge. I found that argument satisfying.

Immutability

Immutability is the doctrine that God does not change or is not caused to change. Stump shows how Aquinas’ understanding of this doctrine does not mean that God cannot respond to prayer or respond to different circumstances in time. Her analogy is that God can at time one (t1) tell Jonah that he will destroy the Ninevites in 40 days from (t1)  and 40 days from then (t2) keep them from destruction upon their repentance in one simultaneous (because of God’s eternal nature), complex (because the results are experienced in time by us) act of will (76).

Simplicity

The notion of God’s simplicity is, at its base, the idea that God is being. Or, as my friends and I concluded in high school, “God doesn’t just exist, God is existence itself.” Now, weirdly, my debate team friends and I didn’t find a problem between saying, “God is existence” and “God exists.” But many philosophers, for good reasons, find those two statements contradictory. One, for instance, is that if God is God’s own nature, it appears incoherent to claim that God can choose between “x” and “not-x.” Why? Because God cannot do other than what God does because God is God’s nature. Stump argues that Aquinas’ understanding of the intellect as always active allows for the idea that God can act because of knowledge which God comes to actively without being acted upon (thus being passive).

Implications

Stump’s reflections on the implications are really quite good. I’ll leave you with a few sentences:

  1. If God is eternal, then God’s having assumed human nature is not something characteristic of God at some times but not at others. It is something characteristic of God always. (100)
  2. The person who wept over Lazarus was God-God in his human nature but still God. And the grief that gave vent to those tears is also always present to God. If it were not so, there would be succession in God; and then God would be temporal and not eternal. (101)
  3. Perhaps more importantly, it [the doctrine of divine simplicity] provides a metaphysical grounding for an objective ethics because it can ground morality in God’s nature, as distinct from God’s will. (101)

Conclusion

The book was brief, pleasant, cogent, and helpful. I highly recommend it for anybody who wants to understand Aquinas, the relationship of philosophy to theology, or who wants to reflect upon God’s relationship to time.

Jesus the Good Shepherd

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Mark’s Jesus

A common claim in New Testament studies is that Mark’s gospel must be first because it apparently contains the least developed understanding of Jesus, but John’s gospel was last because it clearly refers to Jesus’ divinity.

The problem with this is that Mark’s gospel alludes to and presupposes Jesus’ divinity by what it makes plain throughout its pages. The problem is that these assumptions only surface by means of certain allusions. In other words, Mark believes in Jesus’ divinity, but he only expresses this by “telling it slant.”[1]

Mark 6 and Psalm 23

In Mark 6, the story of the feeding of the five thousand has some wonderful allusions to the twenty-third Psalm. I recommend that you read the Psalm and the section of Mark in the ESV below:

Psalms 23:1-6 ESV A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. (2)   He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. (3) He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.   (4) Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.   (5) You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. (6) Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Mark 6:34-52 ESV When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. (35) And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. (36) Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” (37)   But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?”   (38) And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” (39)   Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. (40) So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. (41) And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. (42) And they all ate and were satisfied. (43)   And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. (44) And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men. (45) Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. (46) And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.   (47) And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. (48)   And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them,   (49) but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, (50)   for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” (51) And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, (52) for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.

If you compared the above texts you may have noted that Jesus:

  1. Has compassion for people who were as a sheep without a shepherd
  2. That he teaches them (presumably about repentance/righteousness and God’s kingdom as in the rest of Mark)
  3. Has people sit in green grass beside the water
  4. Feeds them
  5. Calms (stills) the waters of the sea
  6. Tells them not to fear sinking (the sea symbolizes chaos and death, see Jonah)

Mark adds the “green grass” bit where it is missing in the other gospels. Also, his is the only gospel that connects the description of the people as sheep without a shepherd to the story of feeding of the five thousand. This is significant for two reasons:

  1. It shows us Mark’s rhetorical point: Jesus is a shepherd like the Lord.
  2. It shows us that, despite claims to the contrary, the gospel writers were not literarily unsophisticated.

The point I wish to focus on is the first. Mark’s gospel, in my estimation, is an expanded statement of the Christian gospel and a manual for repentance (Mark 1:1 and Mark 1:14-17).

In Mark 6, Jesus is presented as having characteristics that make him utterly trustworthy. He is portrayed as utterly competent to guide humanity into life in the house of God. Therefore, part of the Christian gospel is the competence of Jesus. Jesus, according to Mark, is at minimally a human being who is supremely capable of being a broker bringing humanity to God. Maximally, Jesus is presented as the divine Shepherd incarnate.

Concluding Devotional Postscript

For the Christian who accepts the truth of the gospel, this section in Mark is especially valuable. For one, Mark 6 depicts Jesus beyond just a man to know about. He is presented as the most trustworthy figure on the scene of human history. This means that all of his teachings can be relied upon as a foundation for a life of eternal safety.

Second, Mark 6 helps us look back to Psalm 23 as a wonderful summary of the type of life Jesus offers to those who place their confidence in him and faithfully base their lives upon his teachings (see Matthew 7:24-27 and John 8:31-32).

While Psalm 23 not thematically central to the New Testament, over time it has emerged as one of the most significant portions of the Old Testament for Christian living. Learning to read it as a picture of our life with Christ can be a powerful motivating myth for our daily lives. A challenging spiritual exercise might be spending a week looking for ways that God provides each element of the Psalm for you as you attempt to follow Christ.

Footnotes

[1] This is a reference to a poem by Emily Dickinson:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind —